Hi, My Name is Chelsea and I’m Addicted to Netflix

I love watching movies and television shows, but I have always been super old-fashioned about going to the theater or tuning in once a week to watch my favorite shows, until now. Going to school fulltime, playing softball, writing for the Bolt and working two part-time jobs keeps me busy and I dont have a lot of “free time.” For years I denied invitations to jump aboard the bandwagon, until I came to college and wanted something fun and cheap to do, the solution was Netflix.

My roommate got a TV and I subscribed to Netflix, but how does one connect to Netflix? I knew we could always use an xbox360 or something similar, but after researching I found The Roku® Streaming Stick™ (HDMI® Version) from Wal-Mart for $49. With a decent Wi-Fi connection, this small device allows you to stream thousands of “channels” or apps such as YouTube and Pandora. The channel I am most interested in is Netflix.

Netflix was founded in 1997, digitally distributed and launched in 1999 and now employs 900 people at their headquarters in Los Gatos, California. As of January 20th, 2015 it is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 57.4 million members in 50 different countries. Users enjoy more than two billion hours of TV shows and movies per month, including original series, documentaries and feature films, with an average of 93 minutes per day, per subscriber. 61% of users say that they “binge-watch shows at least every few weeks.” Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen. After asking 40 students and staff around campus, if they watched Netflix and what their top three favorite shows were, I found a pattern and compiled a list of NCU’s top 10 favorite, addictive Netflix TV shows.

Gilmore Girls

Criminal Minds

Breaking Bad

The Office

Once Upon a Time

Grey’s Anatomy

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Orange is The New Black

The Walking Dead

One Tree Hill

It was entertaining to hear about everyone’s favorite Netflix obsessions, but I was surprised that only one student said that they didn’t have an account. 1 out of 40, meaning that 97.5% of the students I asked had Netflix accounts, which is pretty crazy to think about! A U.S News article of our university, said that our total undergraduate student population was 484. Using the data I collected I can statistically estimate that about 472 out of the 484 undergrad students have Netflix. We all know that school, work, extracurricular activities, social lives and hobbies take up enough time in our lives, but as a whole student body we statistically spend 43,896 minutes or 731.6 hours each day watching Netflix. I love Netflix just as much as the next person, but as a university do we spend 731.6 hours each day building our relationships with God? Priorities Beacons, priorities.